Visualizing mega-fires of the past: A case study of the 1894 Hinckley Fire, east-central Minnesota, USA

Abstract

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a combination of weather, land use, vegetation, and complacency about forest fires amongst the public caused a series of extreme fires that resulted in the death of over 2500 people in the Great Lakes Region of the United States. Eyewitness accounts of these fires were generally stories of individual human tragedies with fire behavior often described using anthropomorphic or even religious prose. However, the scenes described by the survivors are now recognized as cases of extreme fire behavior. In this paper we describe development of an animated visual representation of the Hinckley Fire in east-central Minnesota that devastated the town of Hinckley and surrounding communities on September 1, 1894. This was accomplished using modern science and technology coupled with eyewitness accounts, environmental data, and other information, all of which are easily available to educators dealing with forest fires.Data layers developed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources allowed reconstruction of the original forest cover types. The local fire museum’s preservation of historical landuse information allowed reconstruction of the built environment to accompany the eyewitness accounts. ArcGIS was used to develop geographic gridded data layers of these known historic parameters and provide input for the fire simulation program FARSITE. ArcGIS was also used to develop geometries for Visual Nature Studio to render 3D visualization of the historic built and forested environments. ArcGIS was also used to transfer fire perimeters from FARSITE to Visual Nature Studio. ParticleIllusion 3 was used to apply certain visual effects associated with extreme fire behavior consistent with both FARSITE predictions and eyewitness accounts. Both the fire simulation and visualization were able to capture many aspects of the eyewitness accounts as a single coherent fire event.